By Shannon McFarlin News Director
Paris, Tenn.–At a wide-ranging and busy meeting Monday evening, the Henry County Commission approved resolutions adopting the latest reapportionment/redistricting plans, heard an update from Henry County Airport Manager Bob Nolan on the airport’s status and heard a presentation from Chancellor Vicki Hoover on Chancery Court and its cases.
Nolan told the commission that long-term plans call for construction of a new, updated terminal. Other future plans call for rehabbing of the area where the Vanderbilt LifeFlight hangar is located. “We need a ramp to where they are, the pavement around the hangars needs to be built up where they’re starting to give way, plus we need more hangars in general.” The airport also has need for more security cameras and recording system. He said they will be looking into what grants are available.
As RadioNWTN reported earlier, the Airport has now fully reopened after repairs to a drainage washout on the runway were completed. Since reopening, the Airport has been extremely busy, he said.
As Chancellor, Hoover oversees a five-county area and in the 11 months she has been in the position, the caseload is now caught up. (Cases fell behind during the COVID pandemic). “We’re doing very, very well right now,” Hoover said. “To the point that if you need a court date, we can give you a date within the next month.”
Hoover noted that the public in general are uninformed of what the job duties are and she outlined all that the Chancellor does: adoptions, parental rights, probate, estate cases, conservatorships, child support enforcement, contracts, debts, divorces, delinquent tax cases and more.
She noted she was the first Chancellor to approve single-parent adoptions “and that’s working out very well for the parties involved.”
The Chancellor’s office is very busy, with an increasing work load. Accommodations have been made for the COVID pandemic, with hearings held by Zoom and court work accomplished by email in many cases, she said.
She noted that while she was hospitalized, she handled adoptions and a divorce over Zoom to keep the work load flowing.
County Clerk and Master Mary Burns said her office appreciates working with Hoover. “She’s a worker and she’s always available and we appreciate that,” she said. She said her office has received grant monies for installation of equipment that will enable Zoom hearings with other counties and it will be installed in December.
In other business:
–The Commission adopted the latest reapportionment/redistricting for the commission, the county board of education and the county road board. As required by state law, every ten years, county legislative bodies shall redistrict to apportion the county legislative body so that the members represent substantially equal populations.
The County Commission resolution adopts a reapportionment plan for the county which provides for 15 commissioners in each of the five districts for a total county legislative body of 15 members. The road board resolution provides for six road board members, five of which shall be elected from each of the five road districts and one member elected from the county-at-large. The county board of education resolution calls for five school board members in each of the five districts.
The redistricting process has been ongoing for the past few months and County Mayor John Penn Ridgeway said the process is intended to balance out the populations in the county’s five districts.
–In answer to questions from commissioners, Ridgeway said projections are that the portion of 641N currently being built will be completed in early 2023. He said at that point, work will begin on the section from Puryear to Hazel.
He said he and other officials “are trying everything” to get federal monies to expand the number of lanes for the Puryear to Hazel portion “and state officials keep saying we don’t have enough traffic for four lanes there.” He noted that state officials keep pointing to traffic studies that were performed in March of 2020 when the pandemic has shut down travel “so of course, it’s going to show there was less traffic then.”
Commissioner Dell Carter noted that the state had already approved four lanes for the Paris to Puryear section and four lanes for the Kentucky portion, noting there was enough traffic for those sections, but said there’s not enough traffic for four lanes from Puryear to Hazel, “so where did all those cars go between Puryear and Hazel?”
Airport Manager Bob Nolan updates the commission.
Latest Henry County redistricting map.
Top photo: Chancellor Vicki Hoover addresses the commission. Photos by Shannon McFarlin.